Twitters and the lols • The Twitter appears to completely down this afternoon. The fail whale says it will be down for a couple hours. How sad.

You can still use search.twitter.com (formerly called Summize) and search on your user name to see if you missed any comments or anything. I very much like that those two services are seperate, here's hoping that even though they've merged, they stay that way.

I saw that a twitter friend was making sure I made good on my promise to put up a lol picture of my cat. So here's one:

Oh sure, it's not terribly original, but there's something to be said for the classics, and at least I went to the trouble of microwaving up a mini-cheeseburger :)

Computer Woes • Now with less woe! As mentioned earlier, my main desktop computer died on Monday. I found myself a nice refurbished Dell with Windows XP Pro (Didn't want to make the change to Vista yet.) online Tuesday and it was delivered last night. I put my basic graphics suite of software on it all ready, added Firefox etc. It'll be awhile before I get it fully tricked out, but at least I have basic functionality back!

Meanwhile • Pretty straightforward weekend planned beyond that. Off to get a haircut right now. Then tackling a little organization project in my home studio. After that, we'll see what the night brings.

Note: this is a reprint of an email I sent some co-workers in response to the New Christian Bale Terminator Teaser trailer that was being sent around

I’m cool with Batman now being John Conner, but isn’t there a TV series going on simultaneously with this right now?

Feels a little like prequels within rebooted prequels.

Some of that constant “retelling reboot” un-originality that has been plaguing comics for years seems to be creeping into the movies now too.

On it’s own merits the movie looks good enough. But I’m getting burned out somewhat on retreads.

(Along those lines, even though I’m looking forward to seeing the Dark Knight tonight, there’s still a little edge missing because, It’ll probably be similar to comics I’ve seen, plus I’ve seen the Joker on screen before and I’m so familiar with the characters that there are some beats, even having avoided the previews that I know they’ll have to hit.)

Pixar seems to be the only studio making original films now, and only every-other-one of those is targeted beyond the toddler set.

I sort of find myself in a world lately where everyone seems to be obscuring their feelings on even the smallest topics. It seems that honesty and directness are seen as negatives in all regards.

Has that been how it's always been? I've had that sense before of course (I've also always felt more of that current undertow in Grand Rapids than Metro Detroit.), but the last couple years it seems to have gotten even more prominent. Is it a regional thing. Is it a shift in the political climate. Is it just me?

If one has to avoid people-- or tighten your circle down to a triangle or a single individual or no one at all-- If you have to obfuscate-- If one has to abandon all honesty, directness and openness in pursuit of ones ends? What does that say more about? The environment? The circumstances or the individual?

And are the gains worth what has been given up?

It's not a thing. I can deal. But it's a little sad. I feel bad for these people that live that way.

I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that my main PC died. At first I thought it was the power supply, but after trying a second power supply, it doesn't look like that is the problem. The computer had been randomly restarting, and various random programs would just quit for the last few weeks. It was enough to be annoying but infrequent enough not to cause major problems as long as I hit the save button regularly. I ran multiple virus checkers, etc. but didn't come up with anything. No errors out of the ordinary when running defrag or chkdsk or any of that sort.

My running hypothesis is that having several extra cards inserted and keeping the USB ports maxed out and the box powered on 24/7 for a few years may have just been too taxing for some part of the power system or something along those lines.

Fortunately, I still have a half dozen computers-- most of which are at various stages of antiquity and have been given new life with Linux distros-- that can get on the net.

While adding a couple needed apps to one of the most recent of those "backups" I had another interesting failure. The keyboard didn't work. Random letters and cntrl keys etc, would show up on the screen when typing on it.

I plugged in a newer keyboard and no problems.

So for those keeping track at home. Minus one computer, and now strangely enough, minus one keyboard. I don't think I've ever had an entire keyboard fail before. That's a new one.

I've been really enjoying Twitter. You can find some very interesting random people on it. However, some people use it differently, than I do, I have found.

Case in point, I have been following a fairly interesting young designer. Lots of enthusiam, lots of interesting links. Increasingly, lots has become the keyword. Over a dozen posts an hour. Most of them links.

I find Twitter is nice for "breaking news" and keeping in touch with how people's days unfold, but those that use Twitter as a link blog, I quickly find just annoying. I'm guessing from these Twitter link-bloggers there is an intoxication to seeing over 100 people in your follow list and knowing that when you publish a sentence it will be forced in front of 100 people. But Twitter has icons, and after awhile if someone publishes too many micro interuptions of non-urgent information in an urgent attention channel like Twitter, you start to ignore their icon. If you are busy you don't have time to click on someone's 10/12 links an hour, and it becomes annoying that your other Twitter friends have been scrolled out of the window by these "Twitter-Time-Hogs".

There comes a certain point, where you get tired of seing your Twitter scroll dominated by one person's icon too.

Basically I reached that point with a Twitter Link Blogger today and saddly I "unfollowed" her. She has some good content, and because of that I subscribed to the RSS feed of her Twitter instead. Since she was treating Twitter like a blog, I put her into the attention channel I read blogs in-- Google Reader. I can still see her content now, in my Google Reader, but unfortunately there will no longer be any of the real time conversation. And that's too bad, but really that's the best thing to do for Twitter abusers, as there is only so much attention to parse out in a day.

» Aware A-Pad $300 Convertible Tablet PC? This could be very very cool.

If this isn't vaporware, then this could very well be ideal. processor is very light, but with linux, it should still run a web browser and GIMP very easily, and that's really all I'm interested in primarily with a device like this. (PDFs and CBZs as well but that should be easy enough to run too.)

This is supposed to be out in two months. I'll mark my calendar for this one.

From Engadget:

Aware Electronics now looks set to somewhat rectify. It's apparently now set to jump into the game with this 7-inch number, which packs an Aday5G 800MHz X86 processor (all bets are off on that one), 4GB of NAND Flash, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth (with optional 3G and GPS), an integrated webcam, dual USB ports, an SD card slot, and the LINOS Linux distribution for an OS.

» According to this MakeUseOf article, Microsoft has some new software called SteadyState that locks down and restores your Windows PC after each reboot. Looks like a slick way to combat malware and damaged program files/settings. I might try this the next time I get a new Windows PC.

» gifmake.com, Making animated gifs couldn't be easier. This is a slick and easy to use web app.

Just saw the below image of Iran's Weapons Testing over at Boing Boing. Their Nuculear program looks advanced indeed. I'm guessing that after the below image gets out, Japan will have no choice but to join a coalition of the willing against Iran.

Wall-E - Very sweet movie. Also terribly subversive pro-environment, anti-consumer economy for a movie produced by Disney that will be sold in Wal-marts. The opening of the movie is a little like Wil Smith's I am Legend, but if it starred the son of R2D2 and Johnny No. 5. Not a movie I'd reccomend people take little kids to, not that there is anything objectionable in it, but mostly because I think it's near-silent-film nature might be challenging for the pre-school set. I highly reccomend it to teens and adults that like good science fiction or (and I hate to use this word again) sweet movies- It's just such a sweet little movie, you can't describe it without that word. (I mean Wall-E and Eve, how cute are they *aww* ) Good Stuff Go See.

"Red's the new Blue!"

Batman Gotham Knight DVD - this is the direct to DVD anime compilation disk. It's very similiar in execution to the Animatrix DVD that came out with the Matrix sequels. It's a series of Anime shorts by different animation houses. All the shorts more or less tie-in together. Some are more complete than others. All have interesting looks, but overall, I was a little underwhelmed. The opening animation has 4 kids in a skatepark tell their interpretations of an encounter with Batman, this first short is so similiar to the famous "Dark Knight" episode of the Batman Animated Series that it just threw me off for the rest of the "film". Kevin Conroy the "Batman Animated" voice of Batman ties all the various different shorts together somewhat with his awesome vocal delivery, but there are some styles in this film that hearing Kevin Conroys' voice matched with the wildly (at times) non-traditional Batman depictions threw me off as well.

I'd reccomend this one to Batman die-hards, or fans of Animation. Casual Bat-fans might just want to rent it or skip it all together. Interesting flick, but best if you are already a fanboy.

Blood Diamonds - Flipping through the channels last night and I stumbled on the opening of this movie, it grabbed me and (once Jennifer Connlley stepped on screen) held my interest through to the end. Leo DiCaprio as a believable very awesome tough guy mans man action hero-- seriously who would have thought?

Rich backgrounds, and settings: visually, politically, and emotionally. This is a movie that manages to be both highly engaging and highly educational at the same time, no easy feat.

And then of course there's Jennifer Conlley who gives a great performance in this film too. (But take that with a grain of salt, because really-- I'd watch a sequel to Career Opportunities with Jennifer Conlley, even if it was just her dressed and riding the Penny Pony for 90 minutes.)

Anyway, Blood Diamonds, if you're like me and somehow managed to miss this one. Rent or seek it out on your premium cable channels, it's good stuff.

My friends Adam and Comfort had some B&W sketches commisioned of their Uniques Comic characters by: Ryan Ottley, Taki Soma, Mike Oeming, and Franchesco.
Comfort also really enjoyed coloring the pieces. If you are a fan of those artists. Go give the sketches a look.

The news stations seem to be working very hard to prop up McCain right now. I don't see that as a vast right wing conspiracy however. I do see it as a desperate attempt to keep this presidential race feeling like more of a neck and neck contest, so that they can continue to milk the cheap news programing drama it contains for them.

Trinity's first couple issues were ok, but that multi-week brawl, seemed stretched out abit didn't it? And the back-up Tarot story? Blah.

Final Crisis #2. Seems like a book set in Grant Morrison's own distorted DCU shouldn't have got a Crisis label. Gives it more weight than it should have. I'm almost a year behind on most DC books, but seriously, the GL's have really been F'd up. GL's are not cops, that metaphor looks like it's been applied way to strongly the past year. It's disappointing to see an interesting mythology get trivialized to the level it appears to have gotten to from the sampling I've gotten in Final Crisis.

Bla Bla Bla, I know only comics etc. etc. but for DC's two big flagship series, these do disappoint.

I saw the 7pm "day before" screening of Hancock Tuesday night. Overall I liked the movie, but as I've seen elsewhere on the net, the movie didn't quite seem to know what it wanted to be Drama or Comedy. Basically the premise is Drunk, Asshole Superman who saves the day while generally making it even worse. He meets a do-gooder suburban PR dad type, and together they set out to reform Hancock.

There are some serious bits in this movie but they are overshadowed by the "My Ex Girlfriend is a Superhero" style gags. In a lot of ways this movie is the male version of that one.

There's also a twist toward the end that seems interesting at first but ultimately doesn't seem to go where I thought it should. The movie also suffers from a lack of a good villain.

As far as summer popcorn fare goes, this is a good movie. As cinema, probably not so much. If you are on the fence and are feeling the wallet pinch from a summer glut of Superhero movies, I'd say wait and watch this one on DVD.

The Onion Movie

I watched The Onion Movie this morning. Some friends brought it over and lent it to me last night. Liked it overall. It was a smarter Scary Movie style flick. Not as smart or snarky as the website is generally, but in a week without Stewart or Colbert, I liked it.

Let's Go Surfing

» There's a new eVite type service that the net is buzzing about. Anyvite.com. I tried it, it was dead easy simple. I liked it. I also like the way you can upload pictures, link to videos, and leave comments. I'll probably use it on the next get-together that I'll need something like that for.

In anycase it looks like Walmart has changed from their star to instead be represented by the little spinny symbol on your computer that you see while you are waiting for things to load. Also looks like they are dropping the hyphenation.

I wanted to like ABC Family's Middleman. Sadly I didn't. Couldn't really even make all the way through the first episode. Sort of Men in Black meets My Name is Earl. It just didn't work. Cast, dialogue, pretty much everything, while earnest just fell flat for me.

It's too bad really, I was hoping to have it fill an open slot on my Summer TV night schedule. *sigh*

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad